HUGELY VALUABLE UNRACED AT SHELBOURNE
Ian Fortune
For the second year, Lewis Byrne of Celtic Cooling Refrigeration & Air Conditioning has came on board to sponsor the hugely valuable Celtic Cooling Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Open Unraced 525 at Shelbourne Park.
Last year’s competition was one of the great competitions of its type of the past decade with future stars Ballymac Stud and Magical Major sharing the honours in the final but a whole host of other star names emerged from the competition.
These include subsequent Gold Cup winner Coloursaregreen, Juvenile Derby champion Getup The Boy, Derby finalist Glengar Silent, Select Stakes winner Bogger Bob, Ballymac Siun, Made To Measure, Highview Dynasty and many, many more.
DIFFERENT STRUCTURE
This year’s competition will have a slightly different structure both from a racing and payments point of view.
The winner will now receive €12,500 with €4,000 to the runner-up and €2,000 to third. Each of the unplaced finalists will receive €1,000. Where the real difference can be seen is in the prelims.
Each opening round heat winner will now receive €500, while the semi-final winners will earn €1,000. Unplaced semi-finalists will also be remunerated with each receiving €250. It means that, should your greyhound go unbeaten through the competition, they will earn a most impressive €14,000.
The opening round of the Celtic Cooling Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Open Unraced 525 is scheduled for Friday, June 12th with the semi-finals set for just four days later on Tuesday, June 16th. There will then be a gap of eleven days to the final on Saturday, June 27th.
The final will be run alongside the final of the Donal Beatty Memorial Corn Cuchulainn. Needless to say, it leads nicely into the Irish Puppy Derby which is due to commence on Saturday, July 4th. Last year’s competition received a full entry of 36 and hopes are high that it can attract a similar number this year.